On Building is an action that moves towards the future. It involves imagining another reality, another world, different to this one.

In words of the architect: “Building is a long journey through the present continuous. The past exists as an echo, as a phantasmal form that is no longer discussed, and sometimes even its origin is forgotten.

Building means taking root in the mud, squelching through it on a journey without distant horizons.”

Here, the buildings are presented, captured by Adrià Goula, as visual forms, as compositions of planes and surfaces that form volumes and also as a dialectic of the light and shade that define spaces.

Set among the images, like axe blows in the mass, are words and, at the end, the principles of order determined by the plans.

This book collects precise information on the main recent projects by Mateo, from the Offices in Boulogne-Billancourt (France) and the PGGM Headquarters in Zeist (Netherland), to the Banc Sabadell Headquarters Renovation and the Catalonian Film Theatre in Barcelona.

Chair at the ETH Zürich, Josep Lluís Mateo is an international acclaimed Spanish architect with current projects worldwide.